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I suspect that if teacher A were demonstrating that there are a number of approaches to learning repertoire, for instance, it would be a simple thing for a student to continue gaining even more approaches from a second teacher. A student insisting on doing things in one way only suggests that they were taught in a "there-is-only-one-right-way" manner (OR that the student just has that personality!!).

Actually, yeah you do sound like a control freak. I mean, your reaction of anger and frustration isn't typical for a teacher when their student gets lessons from someone else. You say you "insist" on the student following your way. I never teach like that. I show the student several ways and approaches. True there can be bad teachers who've given students bad habits and you need to correct that. But you aren't showing the student how to figure things out and experiment to find out what works best for them.

Maybe the way you teach is bad and I should correct that. I don't think anyone is going to mind because its not typical for a teacher to get angry and frustrated when their student is getting lessons from someone else. There's no twist of your word, no assumptions and this seems to be the view point of a few people here. You guys can share you're students around all you want and you can teach how ever you want because its your business right? I don't share my students and I teach how I want because its my business right?

In terms of contradicting myself, ya it would be contradicting if you just read it without thinking beyond "how am I going to make DD look like a fool with what he just said".

Let's try to be super clear. Students who have been half taught, mis-informed, etc...are to forget about their previous teacher and accept my method. They can question it the first few times, but they learn very fast why questioning my ability or knowledge is not going to help them in anyway. I don't really care how it sounds, the point is for them to come learn from me. They pay me to guide them because they obviously cannot do it own their own. Questioning me every chance they get is not something that should be a priority in any way. Should the instance come where they have something unique to offer, I'll listen. But really...should I expect any student to surprise me every lesson by showing me about learning piano more than a handful of times?

I'm reading most of this conversation as not realising we are talking about kids as young as 5 in this kind of a context (not necessarily this particular instance). I once had a 5 year old start with me [an absolute beginner], skip the second lesson, turn up at the third having practiced nothing at all, and instead of having a fourth lesson they said they had decided to stick with their 'first' teacher!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Needless to say, I didn't even bother wasting my time pursuing them for the two lessons' worth of fees they owed me - GOOD RIDDANCE!!!

I mean, your reaction of anger and frustration isn't typical for a teacher when their student gets lessons from someone else.

REALLY?!!!!

That student didn't quit lessons with Dragon and all of a sudden jump to a new teacher. They tried the teacher out while still sticking with you.

If they are looking at other teachers, it means they aren't getting something from you. And if that's the case then so be it.

Really? My student tried another teacher because they weren't getting something from me? Strange, I could swear we have pages upon pages of post referring to the fact that I have discussed extended lessons with the student because we were lacking time and not so much because she wasn't getting enough out of me.

Did you not have a response to me saying I would teach your students because you wouldn't mind? Instead you just somehow think I'm just throwing an attack on you and saying you teach bad? Crazy.

People like me who just teach classical right? How in the world did you come up with that assumption? I'm starting to have more issues with a few of you teachers more than anyone or anything else. I think I've spent more time trying to explain and defend and clearly spell things out, but no matter what I come out as a "classical only, control freak". I think my time explaining my situation is up.

Actually, yeah you do sound like a control freak. I mean, your reaction of anger and frustration isn't typical for a teacher when their student gets lessons from someone else. You say you "insist" on the student following your way. I never teach like that. I show the student several ways and approaches. True there can be bad teachers who've given students bad habits and you need to correct that. But you aren't showing the student how to figure things out and experiment to find out what works best for them.

Let's try this with the full paragraph.You think people don't get upset when someone else teaches their student. You think I teach classical only (I like that one, that was pretty random). No body was asking how you teach as that isn't what is in question. But...if you don't care if someone teaches your student, then any hobo could start teaching them for free and making a mess of things. You're not really teaching them at that point, you're really un-doing other peoples mistakes.As much as I'd love to continue guessing where methods on improve and me teaching classical only have anything to do with what the topic or sub topic is about, zzzzzzzzzzzzz

Hey I was paraphrasing his sentence...and we all know how "good" the Aussies use English!! G'day mate, another shrimp on the barbie?! aussie aussie aussie!! oy oy oy ! Blimey bird go eat some Vegemite!

Why do I get the sense that this thread is heading for a locking, just like the last one. Well, perhaps it's because a search for understanding seems to be getting lost again amidst a jockeying for position on the rankings of 'who can zing the other better.'

Hey I was paraphrasing his sentence...and we all know how "good" the Aussies use English!! G'day mate, another shrimp on the barbie?! aussie aussie aussie!! oy oy oy ! Blimey bird go eat some Vegemite!

"Blimey bird"???? Hmm, maybe it's been a while since you visited Australia..... And btw, the term 'shrimp' is never used in Australia, that was a special translation so that Americans could understand what Paul Hogan was eating.... And Australians use conjunctions when using the imperative (instead of "go eat" an Australian would say "go and eat").

But you're right, sporting chants are the foundation of understanding the literacy of a nation, aren't they!

Never set foot in Australia in my life, but lived with, traveled and befriended enough of them mates to barely understand them. Throw in a kiwi or 2, they're like a separate breed. Rooming with a Brit, Aussie , Canadian and Saffie at once just about killed my English!! haha

We've finally made you feel what I have felt. The mere suggestion that "maybe" you were a bad teacher and that I should teach your students made you start going off about how you wouldn't want me as a teacher, how we should have a game of who improvises better, how you could find 10 ways to do something better than me. I don't think I ever directly said I was better or worse than anyone. But I'm glad you came back with something, showing that "maybe" you wouldn't want me to teach your students because you already feel you could do things 10 times better than me.

That's how I feel about some random teacher teaching my kid a free lesson because they think that I'm a bad teacher and they could do better. I'm not really saying YOU are a bad teacher, but you haven't really understood how I felt until you started coming back at me with all your comments. I feel (just as you feel) that I can teach my students well enough that they don't need some other teacher to come in.

You're completely defeating the purpose of this forum if you think I should just talk to the parent instead of coming on here first. Isn't think a place for teachers to talk about issues, ideas etc... with other teachers? I'm not just going to talk to my client about this kind of issue without thinking about it and discussing it with other teachers who could at least understand where I'm coming from.

If you're ever in my area, give one my students a lesson any time you want. If you tell them something I would adamantly disagree with, I'm comfortable that I can show them why. I don't teach anything that I cannot justify- why would I present it as a sole acceptable truth if I could not even convince anyone of it? Conversely, if you teach them something different that benefits them, great. The primary goal of my teaching is to prepare my students to think for themselves and not to need to follow orders blindly. The input of others could only serve to help.

What "random teacher" said you're a bad teacher and they could do better? You're defending yourself against allegations that nobody has made. This is simply paranoia. The more you vent this type of puzzling insecurity without so much as a hint of prompting or evidence, the more it will cause people to wonder if you have something to be rightly insecure about. If deep down inside you are secure in your abilities, get on with things and stop "defending" yourself against accusations that nobody ever made. As a professional teacher, I would be very uncomfortable with exposing such a complex of insecurity on a public forum. You really don't want any of your clients to stumble across these kinds of posts, believe me...

Dark Dragon, that's exactly what a forum should be for, imo. Precisely what a forum should be all about.

Wizard of Oz, hahaha, OK, well if you think that Kiwis and Australians are the same 'separate' breed then you quite clearly don't know all that much about Trans-Tasman relations, hahahaha!!! And that must have been one big room you were all living in (brit, aussie, kiwi, saffie, canadian)!!!

If the student turns up at a lesson doing something that impairs their playing and then they insist on doing it (despite the fact it's wrong/unhelpful/dangerous/time-wasting - select appropriate description as occurs in each instance) *because* their former/alternate teacher has told them to, then the teacher they are with at the moment has no further ability to assist them in their learning. The student places no value on the guidance of the teacher they are with if they won't work *with* the teacher to find a solution.

In such a situation the only answer is to earn trust. If you rubbish what the other teacher (and previous authority) said, you also thrust a knife into their reasons to trust authority in general- which includes yours. To exercise authority in such a situation is actually to undermine yourself- unless you can prove yourself to be worthy of exercising authority.

Simply saying "you will obey me now" cannot help in these situations. Such an approach is probably what leads to those kinds of school classroom teachers we all remember who students obeyed but despised. The more you rely on pure authority over earned respect, the more authority you need to exercise to get your own way. And the more you continue to fuel that distaste for authority- requiring even more authority to be utilised to retain order etc. It soon spirals hopelessly out of control.

Nyiregyhazi, I agree with all you have written in response to my post above..... Unless the teacher finds a way to establish trust with the student the situation does spiral out of control, and it becomes an untenable relationship.

I've had a situation where I took a student from my mum - a student I had known (via my mum's teaching studio) for some number of years. The parent was excited about making the transition - there are some aspects of teaching I've specialised in, and the student was transferring specifically to take advantage of these specialisations - my mum was thrilled, the parent was thrilled, I was thrilled, but it turned out the student wasn't so thrilled. For whatever reason this student simply would not do at home the things that we had worked on in the lesson, and before a ten week term was up it was clear that the transition had been a disaster - the parent and I would talk about strategies we each could use, but nothing worked.

It turned out that the student's high school music teacher was making suggestions completely contrary to the teaching I was giving in the private lesson, and the student was afraid that the end of year mark would be bad if my teaching was taken into account, so instead followed the dodgy advice being given by a classroom teacher who had no piano teaching experience at all. We struggled on all year, but it was the WORST teaching experience of my life.

The final mark this student achieved was OK, but not in the league that all my previous students had achieved in the same field of endeavour. So not only was it a horrible experience, but the student ended up with a worse result than the parent (and student for that matter!) had expected when signing up for the tuition with me, and the student was miserable turning up to lessons knowing they were going to ignore my input.

Lose/Lose.

I would suggest that any teacher finding themselves in a situation where another teacher's contradictory advice is being followed to the detriment of the student's progress to simply talk to the parent and say, it's not working. Maybe there will be a solution, but I think by the time it's reached this stage the relationship will almost always be irreparable.

Interesting. I wouldn't deny anything you say there. However, it seems that the issue here was the fact it was clearly bad advice. I'm not saying I could magically have pulled a rabbit out of a hat there. However, if I had that specific problem I would go especially out of my to show why I was telling them to do certain things and do everything I could to force them to take notice through power of argument and demonstration. I've often had students who simply don't want to change fingers on repeated notes or see why there's a point. Fortunately this is an aspect of my technique which is no disgrace, so I'll play a rapid-fire C major scale in which every note is repeated in triplets or semiquavers- and then show them what happens if I attempt the same with one single finger instead of by cycling through them. I feel that this type of demonstration earns a substantial amount more respect than any amount of imposed authority could achieve. If someone else had said repeated notes work better with one finger, I think they'd be questioning that advice pretty quickly. You can't always win, but my means of trying to do so would always be to attempt to engage the student's thoughts.

Incidentally, I'm certainly not opposed to the idea that persistent outside advice could be harmful. Clearly that can happen. The issue for me is whether the teacher objects on the grounds of someone else getting involved (no matter what the results are) or whether they object based on negative impact. Floods of poor advice would trouble me- not the notion alternate ideas coming into the equation. Clearly, what you describe there is not merely a jealous or insecure reaction.

I would suggest that any teacher finding themselves in a situation where another teacher's contradictory advice is being followed to the detriment of the student's progress to simply talk to the parent ....

In the case of a high school student might I suggest that the student should also have a chance to talk to the private teacher about the situation. Music is full of politics, negotiations and ego, and an experienced musician might help a young lady or gentleman learn to wend their way sweetly through the minefield.

Wizard, it was a joke. A play on words. A deliberate misunderstanding. A kiwi in this case is not a fruit. This is a kiwi. Note the concentrated gaze, which explains the superb sight reading abilities common to musicians from Down Under.